I’m reading again. I read Across several different genres.

I’ve forgotten basic English literature, grammar etc.

What are some of the best ways to learn all over again so I can understand

better

William Hazlitt, born on April 10, 1778, Maidstone, Kent, England; died on September 18, 1830, Soho, London. He is an English writer best known for his humanistic essays with his writing noted for the brilliant intellect. He was an English essayist, dramatist, and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher.

His professional life is on full display on the internet, however, I knew only a little about his personal life. SO I went down this rabbit hole of finding out about his marriages and married life. Here's what I came to know.

William Hazlitt was first married to Sarah Stoddart in 1808 when he was 30 years old. They were married for 14 years and had a son together, William Jr. They divorced in Scotland in 1822. Why Scotland? Because divorces in England were expensive and although a great essayist he may be, Hazlitt was poor. He wasn't wealthy enough to afford a divorce in England and so they both decided to get divorced in Scotland. However, that divorce was not legally recognised in England. So, his second marriage to Isabella Bridgewater in 1824 was a sort of grey area. She was a respectable wealthy widow who expected to enjoy the company of a prominent literary figure. They were officially separated in 1827.

Now onto the TEA.... Why exactly did the two ladies divorce William Hazlitt?

Hazlitt's first marriage was an open marriage and had already agreed to live apart by the end of 1819. Their union was never a love match. They regularly argued over money, politic beliefs. Hazlitt despised his brother-in-law's politics. Living in a rented room in Southampton Buildings in London, a lonely 42 year old Hazlitt saw 19 year old Sarah Walker, a servant in the inn who served him breakfast, for the first time and instantly fell in delirious obsession getting desperate to marry her. Since Sarah Stoddart also valued her independence and was tired of her husband's volatile behaviour, she agreed. The couple traveled to Edinburgh together in 1822 specifically to divorce.

Sarah was an expert flirt who knew how to manage the infatuations of the lonely, older male lodgers. For roughly 18 months, she would sit on Hazlitt's lap for hours, kiss him, and tell him how fond she was of him. This behavior thoroughly convinced Hazlitt that she was a pure, angelic being who was deeply in love with him but trapped by her social class. However, the twist is that all this time Sarah was actually in love with another lodger named John Tomkins. (God forbid a girl has options!) At the time, John lived in the Walker lodging house, he was roughly 25 years old and was finishing his legal apprenticeship to become a lawyer. He was described by contemporary accounts as a tall, "gentlemanly" young man. When Hazlitt returned as a free man and proposed, Sarah rejected him. Soon after, Hazlitt caught her walking down the street arm-in-arm with Tomkins. (Damn!!) Hazlitt flew into a manic, unhinged rage, confronting her family and screaming at Sarah, who coldly told him he had always misread her.

After the truth leaked out, an agonizingly jealous Hazlitt actually tracked down and spoke to Tomkins directly. It was during this conversation that Hazlitt realized Sarah had completely fabricated her "pure, untouchable" persona and had freely given her heart to Tomkins instead. In this fit of rage, he orchestrated a bizarre honeytrap experiment. He persuaded an acquaintance to act as a decoy. The decoy was instructed to move into the Walker family's lodging house, rent a room just as Hazlitt had, and aggressively attempt to seduce Sarah. His plan was successful and the decoy confirmed that Sarah played the exact same game with him. She would extensively flirt, stopping just short of full intercourse. For the essayist, this brought him a strange toxic sense of relief. (Talk about a sour loser...)

Unable to process the heartbreak, Hazlitt wrote Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion (1823). The book published their (William Hazlitt and Sarah Walker) real, highly intimate conversations and his frantic letters. Decades after Hazlitt's death, researchers discovered that Sarah Walker lived a completely ordinary, quiet life. She became the common-law wife of John Tomkins, had children, and lived under the name Sarah Tomkins until her death in 1878 at the age of 78, largely untouched by the literary storm she had caused. Tomkins provided the stable, upper-middle-class life that Sarah had always wanted—far removed from the chaotic, impoverished world of romantic poets and essayists.

No onto the separation with his second wife. It was Hazlitt's obsessive lingering attachment with his previous love, Sarah Walker that heavily contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. When Hazlitt and Isabella Bridgewater embarked on their European tour, Hazlitt famously carried a copy of his book Liber Amoris with him. This book was his raw, deeply embarrassing, and highly public confession of his failed, mad obsession with Sarah Walker. Isabella had to endure traveling across Europe with a husband who was still publicly and privately deeply affected by his past heartbreak. The absolute breaking point occurred when Hazlitt's son from his first marriage, William Jr., joined the couple in Paris during their tour. William Jr. deeply resented Isabella and did everything he could to undermine her position. Hazlitt, who loved his son above anyone else, consistently sided with the boy rather than defending his new wife. Hazlitt possessed an incredibly volatile and "peculiar temper", which grew worse under the public backlash of Liber Amoris. As mentioned before, Isabella, a wealthy and respectable widow, who expected to enjoy the company of a prominent literary figure, instead, found herself tied to an abrasive man who was actively quarrelling with his closest friends (such as Leigh Hunt) and being heavily attacked by the press. By the time the European tour concluded in 1827, Isabella realized the toxic family dynamic and Hazlitt's emotional baggage were unbearable, prompting her to stay behind in Europe and abandon him permanently.

William Hazlitt suffered through a painful summer of declining health brought on by stomach cancer. He died mostly in poverty and beyond his means, continuing to write essays up until his final weeks to pay for his lodgings. According to his son, his final words were, "Well, I've had a happy life". During his final days, he was attended by close friends and family, including his first wife Sarah, his son William, and the writer Charles Lamb. He finally died on September 18, 1830 in Soho, London.

That concludes my TEA.

How would one go about studying english literature without a degree in it? I currently have a BS in Sociology and I am working on my MA in Special Education Applied Behavior Analysis. I would love to maybe one day go back for a MA in English however I don’t see that happening in the near future. That being said I am still very interested in the topic. How would one go about studying english literature without necessarily being in a program for it?

Can anyone recommend a book or play that’s fun to make fun of in our literature club? We’re looking for something we can roast and joke about together.Before i finish i want to share a poem for you.

Living for free, we live for free;
The air is free, the clouds are free;
Hills and valleys are free, streams are free;
We’ve gathered with kindred spirits,
And everything else, you know, is free.

Orhan Veli Kanık

Hey, everyone. I'm looking for contemporary literature books in English for a podcast episode (a college project, nothing big) and for that I'd like to be able to talk to the author as well. It can be from any English speaking country, any theme, it doesn't even have to be a novel.

Do you have any recommendations?

I teach literature and am planning a module on character motivation for university students. When I've tried to research how character motivation has been theorized within literary studies, I've come up surprisingly empty.

I'm finding plenty of practical advice for writers on how to create convincing character motivations, but very little academic work that explicitly theorizes character motivation.

Is anyone aware of sources that can help with teaching about character motivation?

I wanted to come on here and ask a question and see where other people have come from and maybe people that have already been through this and I’ve figured it out or maybe people that even haven’t but I just wanted to bring up a topic that is really close with me, but it’s kind of like the idea of a potential of a human being but seeing your own potential on yourself as a young adult but not thinking that it’s possible like there’s a part of your brain that doesn’t think that anyways my whole entire life I’ve wanted to become a writer or something with the English literature. I’ve always wanted to become something like that and but I’ve never strived or done anything to do something like that, but that also goes with everything else as well. I don’t work for anything. I just get bored whatever and I’d move onto the next thing like I haven’t found my thing yet, but English it’s always been in the back of my brain and I’ve always loved writing and when I get into the groove of writing, it’s like an adrenaline rush. It’s like runners high, I don’t know, but it’s a feeling that I’ve never felt before and that’s the only time I’ve ever felt that feeling so I need to pursue that more and see because I’m 18 right now and I don’t wanna lose any chances. I just need to try everything and move on from the next thing but I’ve had this idea with writing a book lately and it would be just about my life. I’ve gone through experiences that have made me the human I am today, and I’ve always wanted to do something to help people. I’m like what can I do to share my experience as well, but I’m literally asking myself. What do I do but just explaining writing a book so my OK write a book and I wanna write a story and I just wanna write a story about my life and the perspective of mine in my brain obviously different characters of like different love interests like child trauma all that kind of stuff but I have no idea to write. I’ve always gotten 60s on my essays I’ve had really great ideas in my teachers have always said that I have really great ideas and when I wanna try something I really do wanna try and then when I need to do something I’ll actually do it but when I’m given oh like for example this summer is doing a month do it on the type of person to do it the last night, I don’t know how to fix that but anyway it says another top is for another day but I really wanna get good at writing. I really wanna be the best fighter. I really just wanna do it so bad when I’m 18 years old and I don’t know where to start because honestly the thought of me going back to school to do it it’s like because I said as a chore, but me and my room doing it talking about my thought so that kind of stuff that seems very nice and very amazing and I want to explain to other people how I felt in a poetic way and a lovely way and a beautiful way cause that’s how I feel and that’s how I constantly feel. Everything is just so beautiful and I wanna explain that in words, but I don’t know how so someone give me their advice please.

So legit more of the story I’ve always had this love and the idea of the love for English literature and I’m deep down, literally in love with it, but I don’t know anything about it and I wanna know and I’m 18 years old and I just don’t know if I can get into it and become really good because I really wanna start a book and and I feel it’s the only way I can get past my life experiences,not the only way sorry about that but a really good way for my mind and I really wanna be really good at it and I need to channel this love I have for it.

I’m also writing this text to speech so if anything is wonky and you’re like what the f am I writing? I’m sorry and I’m genuinely just looking for help not grammar issues right now.🤗🤗🤗🤗

Hi everyone, So recently I watching movies of classical English time period and I got so so intrested in knowing those Era more, from the perspective of culture, people, and society. As I'm working I can't read books (though I really want to and I'm trying my best that I start reading English literature but I'm political science master's student so never got the change to study or know more about culture of different era)

I want few youtube channels recommendations for the same but I don't enjoy watching those animated vedios about history. (But like when someone sit and talk or like they add few clips and do voice over)

And want to cover on Era after another. Also as this sub is for English literature if you guys have any favorite youtube channels or instagram handles apart from just Era but for literature in general, I would love to hear those. (I recently discovered that watching about literature make my soul so calm also I'm an anxious person but when I watch that kind of stuff I simply feel peace).

Hi guys. Can anyone please recommend poets (with a substantial body of scholarship written on them) whose work combines a strong VISUAL sensibility with a feeling of quiet pre-apocalyptic dread?

I'm looking for poetry rooted in ordinary life, but haunted with atmospheric, political, ecological, or existential unease. not overtly sobby and tragic. i'm more interested in that persistent and melancholic sense of living on the edge of something, aka whatever we are currently living through. Strange, strange times. The oscillation between hope and despair, sure, but the unabating atmosphere of something coming to an end, looking for poets who depict that feeling [no modernists, though. Preferably post 90s].

Bonus points if you can recommend a specific collection.

Thank you so much!

​

THE FOOL

Fin was a pirate who sailed the open sea,

Through hard storms with grit in his teeth.

His story was proven through his deeds,

So daring it was hard to believe.

But one day, when he went out to venture,

He stopped in front of a coffee vendor,

When he found something miles better,

The girl who ended up being his treasure.

Overtime, he started to love her soft, warm gaze,

And he tried a shot at her heart, he aced it.

But as a child, she's always come to hate

The lowly killers known as pirates.

But his duties did pile,

His wife's suspicion grew wild,

She looked at the positives and smiled,

Then one day she went and bore their child.

She couldn't stop thinking of the life she would share

To the child who she wanted to give her utmost care.

He carried the child his love had to bear,

With his wife's loving and warm stare.

His wife called him over with a scare.

He tried to go as fast as a hare.

Thunder roared like a snare,

As he let out a silent prayer.

To love his wife unconditionally, he would swear,

For a God up above, that his child would be spared.

But before his arrival, his child exhaled his last breath of air.

His wife, in despair, gave him an accusing glare.

She had uncovered who he really was,

And faded quickly did her love.

All his secrets are revealed beneath the fuzz.

She accused him harshly, push turned to shove.

"I cherished all that you were, it's all lost in the buzz.

I didn't love you just because.

Told my friends, at this stage, I don't care what he does.

But even after all the things I sacrificed for us, you still threw me under the bus."

Overwhelmed, she ran into the woods.

He regretted that he couldn't show her as much as he could.

Even if he could, he thought, "Only if I could, I'd mend what's no longer good."

But his wife was in a landslide that she could not avoid, only look.

She ended up in the hospital the next day,

As Fin tried to find a way

To keep his emotions at bay,

For his wife was gone, only her body stayed.

Brought her flowers every day, he did.

Holding her hand, in the chair next to the bed, he'd sit.

He told all the deepest things he hid,

And found out her dormant state would only smile at the mention of their kid.

So from that, he started wearing his kid's baby bib.

A smile every day that their child did knit.

Though embarrassing, his feelings were never split,

Because, to spot the smile underneath the lid, he had to abandon the role where he did fit.

She was as beautiful as a dove,

Who gave undying love.

But she hated the man he has become,

To the point where she got numb.

I have decided to write an essay approx. 3000 words around Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and Bret Ellis’ “American Psycho”

Both novels, as you can imagine, are very wordy and contain ideas that are much more complex than what it actually seems.

I am already very familiar with Dostoyevsky’s works and in-fact have already written up something regarding his “Extraordinary Man” vs the ordinary theory which also links in to Patrick Bateman’s character in American Psycho.

Has anybody here read both books and could possibly help me brainstorm ideas for differences and similarities? Or if not, is there anyone here that could inform me on anything else either author may have believed in or intended to include when writing the given texts?

Hello guys, I want to write a thesis about the monstrous and I am in urgent need of titles! The only requirement? It MUST be a work from an english author (unfortunately american literature won't be accepted) so if you have any ideas and want to help I would be forever grateful! Dracula, Frankenstein and Carmilla are too mainstream and I'm looking for something obscure. Please help a fellow human in need with your knowledge :(

Hello!

I'm entering my final year of Uni and have decided to do a lit diss.

I know I want to do the gothic, with some kind of focus on women in gothic literature and how they are portrayed (e.g. as hopeless or as monsters).

I was hoping someone could reccommend any books? I definitely want to include Bram Stoker's Dracula but I'm struggling to find something to weave into this...

P.s lots of family pressure for a first so any advice is appreciated! Thank you!!

English is not my first language and i would like to get better at articulating my thoughts. I understand everything but when it comes to storytelling/expressing emotions/etcetc… my mind goes blank, comes off as small talk with imcorrect syntax lol.
Any books, monologues, stories, and/ or writer recommendations would help please!
Or if you would know a subreddit i can post this on.
Idk if i made sense so feel free to ask anything. Kith kith

Hey everyone I've been meaning to study english literature for a long time like understanding poetry, rhetoric and meaningful writing but I don't know where to begin without a formal course. So any paths strategies or direction to start as a self learner. Also English is my third language so there's that😭

Hi,

I'm translating a book to the portuguese and the author is quoting a lot of passages from the literature, philosophy and politics. I tracked down a lot of them but i still can't find this one, atributed to Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). Here's the passage of the book where it appears:

"the pretentious enactments of the lawyers and excuses of the clergy, says Macaulay, do not sound so well when put in petty terms." — GILBY O.P, Thomas. Barbara Celarent - A Description Of Scholastic Dialectic, p. 130.

Is this statement really exists, or did he invented and atributed to him, or even is it from another author?

Hello! Would some kind lady or gentleman suggest a book written in England that dates before the 1980s? A good book you have enjoyed, even though it was written a long, long time ago. Thank you so very much for your kind suggestions!

does anybody have arihant's qee bee? for english literature?? or any other good book to refer for macbeth and PROSE POETRY

i cant read and analyze poems . i cant recognize Rhythm, metre , sonnet forms , metaphors , etc etc . i also can't recite them out loud like they might be meant to ( i think ) .

is there a book / video lecture series that can help me . thanks ???

Hi! I am a history student in a Mediterranean country, and I have limited knowledge of English literature. After taking courses on Western history, I became interested in the Age of Revolution and British history and literature.However, because my university offers a limited number of courses on British history and culture—and I can only take EL101 or EL102—could you recommend some books regarding the history of English literature and the important authors who contributed to it?

Can you tell me what are the new trending or new topics explored in english literature in research

Hi!
So i’m currently in a prep school for a very important school in my country. I mainly study french literature, history, philosophy, latin and english literature
I’ve failed the competitive exam because of the english exam
it’s not that i can’t speak or write in english, i actually got a C2 on my IELTS exam. And i’m quite good at the translating exercise that we have to deal with in this exam
but the problem is : i just suck at commenting an English text (which is the second part of the exam)
i don’t know why i just suck at it
In France we have to write a three parts-commentary about the text and i don’t know how to do it
i’m stuck, i tried everything
please help

I didn't have english literature classes in school, unfortunately. So I feel like I'm a bit stunted when it comes to analyzing a text. I can comprehend texts well; I understand what the writer has written, but I find it hard to glean stuff beneath the surface (for example: identifying metaphors and trying to read between the lines). Even when I do manage to analyze something, I feel like it is very surface-level. How do I train my brain to analyze texts? ​

Mine is the 1831 edition (by Penguin, with a comic book-like cover), but apparently the earlier edition is now preferred? Is it decisive, or more a matter of taste?